WSD Public Board Meeting - September 27

001we're now recording and we're live great katie can you please start us off with roll call yes mr badger here mr bliefeld i'm here mr frank here this is ginsburg here this is heyman here miss karinicus mr stoloff here mrs walsh here mr antonio here alex gandala here we have eight present one absent and one student board wrap this evening okay thank you it's time for the pledge of allegiance and uh can you stand and face the flag indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to welcome everyone to the september 27 2021 work session of the wissey hicken school district's board of directors tonight we will review action items which we will formally vote on at our next board meeting on monday october 4th and in addition we have several presentations and important

002updates i should also note that the board met in executive session earlier this evening to discuss legal and collective bargaining matters item two on our agenda is the list of meetings since late august while item three lists upcoming meetings through the end of october and we'll move on to presentations and for that i'll hand it over to jim thank you uh the first presentation is an introduction of five new district leaders and uh this has been put off a little bit and some of these folks have already been here for a while so actually all five are already in place and we will start with the two people are here live with us tonight which is the first of whom is uh dr aniel dawan and she is our assistant superintendent you've seen her face

003and you've uh heard from her already at these meetings but technically a newbie uh as of february so we certainly welcome dr dewan to the fold and also here is miss daniel hey who is our new director of human resources and danielle possibly picked the most difficult time to start in a human resources job in july and she's been working furiously to get everything in order and at the beginning of school years you might imagine that is a tall order so welcome to you danielle and then with us on the screen are our other three district leaders who have joined us since we've uh been together the first of whom is miss kazaya la tour is aya hello welcome you uh may have seen her in in some committee meetings and because i has already

004been visiting schools in her role as director of equity uh equity and cultural responsiveness and we look forward to having her in many board meetings helping us understand how to get better and understanding all the ins and outs of things related to uh all matters equity our fourth district leader is actually uh from within those first three came to us from different places dr dejuan from phoenixville ms haye from owen j roberts and ms latour from radnor then we stole two people from internal and uh decided that they are going to be district leaders the first of whom is miss sue konopka and sue's there she is the principal has been principal laura going to elementary school for since january is that right sue that thinks so yeah okay all right it seems like since

005january of uh 01 rather than 2021 but in any event she has hit the ground running and really taken that school by storm which i i knew she would and last is miss angela farlow and i believe angela is with us on a zoom somewhere and angela is uh the new principal of bluegill elementary school and she's been there all of about one and a half months and i'm sure in her mind it feels like one and a half decades uh but she's really doing a fantastic job there and we certainly welcome angela although we knew of her and we knew of all of her potential uh she's in a great place now and a really good fit over at lobel so those are our five district leaders and we welcome them all how about

006a round of applause for our new district leader although jim um especially when we were talking about money as an example i feel like she's been here for a couple years now uh so including her in the five new district leaders category seems like a stretch but i guess technically you're correct and danielle feels like she's been here for at least six months but uh yeah yeah exactly exactly but uh thank you and uh welcome to all of our new district leaders it's exciting to get some new talent and fresh blood into the mix to our school district jim was there a new staff introduction our our next presentation is our new staff introductions video um as dr cruz field mentioned we have been very busy in hr we've hired over 84 staff this school

007year so and that's hiring and onboarding so um it's been it's been pretty busy so um and before we get started with the video i want to say it's very special thank you to jen morehouse and our communications department for putting this together she interviewed um many many staff that you'll see um and it and it's a it's a it's a really fun video hi my name is danielle haye i'm your new human resources director i'm super excited to be here at wizahickin and i can't wait to meet all of you hello wiz nation i'm kaziah latour director of equity and cultural responsiveness i'm found at the central office building and i'm looking forward to a tremendous year hi my name is katie maz and i'm the supervisor of curriculum and i work in our

008central office looking forward to a great year with second hi everyone my name is maria master sante i'm the new benefits admin over here at central office and i'm excited to start the school year with lots of new employees and helped all the current ones hi my name is naira garnett i'm the payroll specialist here at withhagan school district i'm excited to be joining the team and i look forward to meeting everyone hi west nation i'm sarah banzinski and i'm going to be teaching second grade at blue bell elementary this year i am so excited to be part of the district and to meet my students and their families hi everyone my name is casey levin and i will be teaching third grade at blue belt elementary this year i am so excited to meet

009everybody in my class and my parents and the rest of the staff and just looking forward to a great school year hello everyone my name is melanie pulaski and i will be teaching at blue bell elementary school and i will be the visual arts teacher for all the students there i am looking forward to getting to know all the students and staff and to create some really amazing inspiring pieces of artwork this year hi everyone i'm jordan cohen i will be teaching kindergarten at lower gwenett elementary school and i can't wait for an amazing year hi everyone my name is zara dugan and i am going to be teaching second grade at lower gwinnett elementary i'm so excited to be a part of the west side in school district and i can't wait to meet

010all of my students and families well hello my name is michelle montio and i will be teaching third grade at lower gwenet elementary i am very excited to get back into the classroom and i look forward to working with all of you hi west nation i'm jen klingerman i'm going to be teaching fifth grade at lower gwen elementary looking forward to a great year hi wisnation my name is brenna waters i am so excited to be teaching first grade at lower gwenett elementary this year and i am so excited to join not only the school district but the community can't wait for the school year to start and see you then hey west nation i'm jerry varade i'm the new art teacher at shady grove and lowered gwenet elementary school i'm so excited to get

011started this year we're gonna be making some pretty incredible awesome art projects i'm so excited to meet everyone in the district hi wissa hicken my name is sydney lamero and i'm going to be teaching music this year at lower gwened shady grove and blue bell i am so so very excited to make music with the students in wishing school district and i can't wait to be a trojan hi everyone my name is brianna carson and i will be the new music teacher at stoney creek elementary this year i'm really looking forward to making beautiful music with all of our wonderful students at stoney creek and having a great year hi everyone my name is katie mccarthy and i'll be teaching second grade at stoney creek elementary and i'm very excited to be part of the

012community hi everybody my name is ali monahan i will be teaching second grade at stoney creek elementary school this year i am looking forward to a wonderful school year hi my name is nicole tetchy i'm a fourth grade teacher at stoney creek elementary and i'm looking forward to a fun fabulous school year hello west nation my name is desmond daniels and i'll be teaching second grade at shady grove elementary i'm so excited to be here in the whistle hicken community and i'm looking forward to a great year i wish and my name is nicole de torre and i will be teaching second grade at shady grove i'm looking forward to a great year and meeting all of my new students hi wissa hicken my name is lexi watt and i will be a long term

013sub in third grade at shady grove i am so excited to start the school year and meet everyone hi wisa hicken my name is jenny stokley i will be a special education teacher at the high school and the middle school i'm so excited to join with higgins school district and meet my students and my colleagues and to have a wonderful year hey wilson again i'm sarah horwitz i'll be teaching french at the middle school i'm a graduate of wis so i'm really excited to be back and i'm looking forward to getting to know everybody hi everyone my name is marla john i'm going to be at the middle school teaching seventh grade science and i'm so excited to be joining west nation hi my name is christina leo i will be teaching seventh grade ela

014at wissa hicken middle school i am very excited to be here as a part of the wisa hicken community and get to know all of my students looking forward to a great year hi my name is ali o'donnell i'm a speech therapist that's going to be working in the elementary and middle schools and i'm super excited to be a part of the wisa hicken community and get started hi west nation i'm julie piscadlo i will be teaching 7th grade science at the middle school and i can't wait to meet all my students and work with you this year hi west nation my name is jerry wilcox i am very excited this year to be a sixth grade teacher at the middle school and i'm really looking forward to meeting all my students and the families

015for the upcoming school year hi everyone i'm tara collins you know i'm going to be a health and physical education teacher at the high school i'm so excited to be part of west nation and to be part of such a great community with lots of school spirit i'm excited for the year highways nation i am matt reed i will be teaching history at the high school for 11th grade i am so excited to be back and to meet all the students i met in previous years look forward to doing that see you soon [Music] hi i'm holly schneider i'm going to teach spanish at the high school this year and i'm really excited to get to know all of my students adios [Music] whenever you're ready all right it's no help having her in here

016giggling all right one more take hi my name is katie moz and i work at no sorry you have to do it's okay i was gonna say we're good okay i think the first one was [Laughter] i'm not good at this kind of stuff yeah i might not get it the first time don't worry that happens a lot okay the rest was so good okay all right okay like right now like just just like start like talking oh yeah i think i'm ready oh should i just go okay okay whenever you are ready okay oh i'm not ready i'm sorry okay i'm very excited to be well can i start again hi my name is naira garnett i'm the payroll specialist now i don't even know what my position is okay hi my name is

017naira garnett i'm a payroll specialist and i'll probably be your favorite person cause i pay you [Music] great wonderful fun fabulous amazing tremendous really amazing inspiring pretty incredible [Music] super excited so excited so excited to be part of west nation very excited so excited to be part of the district i'm so excited to be back so excited really excited to get to know all of my students super excited so excited so excited to meet everybody excited to start the school year i'm so so very excited so excited to be here very excited very excited to get back into the classroom i'm very excited to be part of the community so excited so excited to get started so excited to be joining west nation [Music] right so as you can tell we're all very excited that

018was a theme um uh so our for our next presentation uh tonight i want to uh introduce those who have reached ten year status status tonight i have the pleasure of recognizing ten teachers tenure is a meaningful milestone in a teaching profession professionals test okay i'll try it i'll try again all right we'll try this one more time no feedback tonight tonight i have the pleasure of recognizing each other achieve 10 years district this school year tenure is a meaningful milestone milestone career professional's career once the teacher completes the strenuous three-year probationary period during this time during this time they are formally observed four times each school year formerly a value during the semester during this three-year period not to mention not to mention all the informal visits from another principal and other administration during

019this time period a teacher's classroom performance performance primary is the primary consideration in this ten year decision the teachers we are recognizing we are recognizing this evening demonstrated evidence of their consistent and effective performance the higgins school district has educated thus far jessica murphy jessica murphy a first grade teacher at lower gwen taylor beck taylor beck third grade teacher also laura gwenett brittany patterson second grade teacher at stone teacher at stoney kindergarten teacher at shady grove the next time we have emily bird our language arts teachers as well on behalf of the school board and administration administration congratulations on this accomplishment we wish you all continued success in this district please join me in a round of applause thanks danielle um i also wanted to say uh we were remiss in not giving a round

020of applause to all of our new staff that were introduced through that uh great video it's a round of applause for all of them and also a round of applause for danielle and her team for bringing bringing us 84 new sapphires that's quite an accomplishment okay so i think then in terms of presentation that's that takes yep right so next we're going to hear from our student board rep alex gindea oh is carly here as well too great and uh carly meltzer with some monthly who's taking high school highlights student board reps thank you uh i just want to start by saying that the school year is off to a great start and uh on behalf of like all the students we're all happy to be back together and in the building finally um and

021for the highlights and the beginning of the school year uh whistling held a ninth grade freshman orientation to help all the upcoming freshmen uh assimilate back into high school and i think this was a great experience i was a part of this and all the freshmen you can tell really benefited from this we gave them a tour and shared information uh you could tell this really helped them all um also next week we start our homecoming festivities no friday is everything good all right uh friday we have our homecoming game and that entire week we have a spirit week uh we have some fun games playing some 3v3 basketball tournaments some uh tailgating and some powered puff flag football so next week's uh all fun sorry i couldn't unmute but i want to add to

022that and just say like alex just said we're all so excited to be back in the school and the overwhelming support from the staff has been incredible teachers have been so supportive at least i can say testify to this so supportive and it's just been so exciting to be back and to add on to those highlights national honor society officers have been finalized and in the next few weeks 11th and 12th graders should keep an eye out on schoology for invitations for acceptance into wizarding national honor society and i'd also like to touch on the 9 11 memorial concert held by wissa hicken on monday september 13th the students sorry if you can hear my dog the students under the direction of mr conahan did an incredible job in honoring those lives lost the heroes

023of 911 and their family and finally our whistle higgins sports teams have already accomplished so much in just the beginning stages of the season field hockey is off to an amazing start with back-to-back wins and the boys and girls cross country team competed in their first invitational in two years at abington on september 11th returning with 16 medals and like alex said homecoming is coming up and i'm so excited to get the school together and show our school unity and spirit and i just think it'll be great to have all the community members together thank you carly and alex uh questions or comments for alex or carly from board members yeah uh hey ron i want to ask our uh our two student reps it's uh you know someday we'll actually see you in the

024flesh you know it's like uh seeing you in the squares is like uh 18 months have never happened but since you're back in school every day uh could i ask you briefly uh what's the uh the biggest adjustment you've had to make now that you're uh in school every day and uh that includes having to get up early enough to get to school in the morning i can answer that um i would say school is back to normal and it's kind of like nothing ever happened it's kind of like we just jumped back into uh our normal life so biggest adjustment would just be leaving my house i was virtual all during kovitz so just be leaving your house but as far as the school goes um our school schedule is all the same you

025wouldn't even tell besides us wearing masks so everything's pretty much back to normal and it's all great i'd say that getting to school is a big one especially this year because i have my license so i'm responsible for getting myself to school and so i'm working on that i'm always there on time but it's waking up a little bit earlier that i'm working on and i'd say it's all good adjustments at least for me personally i think that being back in school has just benefited me and my mental health so much i'm so much happier and oh i'm working on traveling through the knuckle in the wissen hicken high school to get through classes i'm not used to so many students being there and so now i'm like getting my way through the knuckle but

026again it's all been great and it feels like we haven't missed all of those months i thank you very much for your uh uh your heartfelt uh uh responses and i'm really glad that uh things are working uh this year and it's uh it should be an exciting year uh in a far better way than it was last year that kind of excitement we don't uh want to have again thank you again yes thank you carly and alex um it's fantastic that we have the entire school district back in person every day five days a week a great accomplishment and i'm glad you guys are having a good start to the school year so far all right so that takes us to the first public comment period of our agenda where we will hear comments

027on agenda items only and agenda items are topics that are listed on tonight's agenda comments on other school related topics not on our agenda should be held until the second public comment period later on this evening and let's see we're going to alternate in-person speakers with speakers on zoom and you will have up to three minutes to speak and i will be strictly enforcing that time limit and when you're called to speak please be sure to state your name municipality of residence and topic please note that it is the board's practice not to engage in back and forth dialogue with speakers and uh with that i don't think we have any in-person speakers scheduled for the first public comment period so we'll take a look over at zoom if there are any hands raised there

028are no hands raised on zoom okay great so then with that i'm going to move on to the board president report so the board president reports there are no informational items this evening but we have two action items for discussion tonight and then voting next week the first one is district goals and ongoing priorities for the 2021 to 2022 school year per document 6-1 so that that uh draft set of district goals and ongoing priorities is in your packets and what i wanted to do was see if there were any comments questions or some discussion from board members about those those proposed goals and priorities if not i can start with one okay since now let's jump into it i'm gonna i have a comment regarding uh number one which is under the academic achievement

029area it's regarding later school start times and the language of the draft as written makes reference to examining options and my understanding would be that the possible options for later school start times would be exploring things like is it a later school start time just for the high school or is it high school and the middle school and also so what's the impact on elementary schools would that be is that a fair assessment jim we're talking options yes certainly there's um uh the concept is pretty simple schools start later so that uh the research about when students sleep uh can be honored the devil is in the details and so options include possibly flipping the times where elementaries start earlier and secondary starts later or sliding everybody later essentially the same uh arrangement we have

030now there uh are transportation options to consider right now we have a essentially a double tiered system and that could change or could stay the same and then of course there's all the options for for after school and before school needs okay thanks uh that's that's what i assumed with the language and then the other piece was that there's a phrase in that same statement that says uh should the decision be to make any changes and i guess this is a question for my fellow board members we've had discussions about later school start times off and on for the past probably like two years i would say and the way this uh goal is written it makes it seem like there's still i guess doubt whether or not we are serious in implementing later school

031start times um but as a group are we okay with this kind of language or do we want something more definitive regarding the implementation of later school start times and it's something just for discussion with my fellow board members any thoughts um uh so i think my personal opinion is is that it should be it should read something along the lines of implementing the new start times in 2023 period and not have the doubt at the end of it other thoughts ronnie i agree with tracy i think we just cut out the doubt we're going to have new start times in september 2023. right ron this has been a topic right and i would say that the question is no longer if but uh when and how right of course that that is the uh

032the most difficult part of it the uh pulling this together and i was just wondering uh the question occurs to me if we change our schedule what does this do for the uh the students that we uh bus to uh to non-whiskey and uh schools do they have to uh to dance to our tune or do we have to dance to theirs so um we would work with whatever the public's non-public school would be um there's a little bit of give meaning if they had an 8 30 start you know can we arrive at uh seven o'clock no but could we arrive at 8 10 yes um so i think we can work with the non-public schools but generally we do try to provide equal service to our own so generally try to arrive at

033a reasonable time frame thank you so would uh any board members have an objection to us amending that statement but just essentially striking the piece that says should the decision be to make any changes for when we vote next week joe i have a question yeah so my understanding of the process that we were undertaking is that the first step would be understanding and researching the options researching what the implications of such a practice would be on transportation on all the other things that were mentioned and that would be the preliminary step the second step would be getting the public input because this won't affect all families the same there are some that have challenges with work schedules and other things that may not coincide with a different school schedule and so really investigating what

034all that means and what the public input would be is an important part of this process and if that's the case before we start to change policy and make recommendations like that i think we really need to get additional input before we do so yeah i agree 100 and i think the goal as stated contemplates uh and there's an expectation that we will do that um we're talking about implementation for september 2023 so that's not next school year but the school year after and i think what myself and i think most board members are expecting is that the administration as well as us will do a good faith effort to gather input and feedback from the community and everyone who's going to be affected by this in determining the details of how we're going to

035do this but again it's less of if we're going to do it but it's more about how we're going to go about doing it and in determining how it's absolutely crucial that we get input from the community and affected uh stakeholders so given that my suggestion would be before we make an affirmative statement would be to gather that input otherwise we're making a statement without the input and that to me that's that's counterproductive okay so then paul do i gather that you would prefer to keep the language of that goal as is when we vote next week that would be my suggestion we have plenty of time to do that if the input comes back as we expect it would in favor of this effort um and you know if this is a 23 effort

036we have a lot of time to to change that language i don't see the benefit of changing it before we get input um actually i i have a comment as well i actually feel that the language should be at the latest by september 2023 if not earlier i mean we were just in a transportation discussion how we're having that as an issue and changing up our bell schedule may be a really practical way to kind of overcome that issue so i think this is something that should be front and center and i think we need to take all things into consideration okay so that's option c so um before we heard from paul and zephy it seemed like there was uh some support from uh myself tracy and ronnie and possibly ron in well yes

037right in striking that the phrase should the decision be to make any changes in essence being a little bit more definitive about the target implementation of later school start times but not how or any of the details um but are there other board members who feel more strongly about the proposed uh language for paul which essentially keep it the same or zephy something along the lines of no later than september 2023. i do have a question based on what zephy said yeah um if we go by the language of no later than um what type of pressure does that put on everybody to implement it um it can't be done overnight the question is how long will it take to implement such a program while we may have the best of intention to get it

038done by a certain date will we be capable of doing that as the question yeah and i think we've previously heard from the administration that september 2022 which is the start of the next school year is not a reason realistic target time frame for implementation of later school start times um so that's why i would not be in favor of saying no later than because we we've heard already that it's not realistic anyway and it could set sort of false or improper expectations with the school community about it and i presume then we're not intending to start this mid-year it's going to start with a school year and if we can't do it 2022 then 2023 is the start time at the very earliest yes and i would just add the reason that i think

039that we should take out this should be is because i think parents need to know that this is going to happen you just don't need to know the details of how or what it will look like but it is going to change um i think if we leave this should be in there then parents might think well maybe it won't happen they're just talking about it i think if we're more definitive with that part of it um that the parents will understand that this is something that is coming coming for the september 2023 school year it will look different we just don't know what the difference is right now amy what if we talk to all the stakeholders we determine it's not possible we're not able to change the start times for whatever reason maybe

040it's transportation uh we can't change the start time what if there are reasons we can't do it then so we're saying right now we're committing we definitely are doing it so it says we have the intent we have the intent of making all the necessary changes and implementing the new start times in september 2023. so i think like if something unforeseen happens i mean our intent doesn't change our current intent right now right um the way i look at it is that we've been sort of beating around the bush with later school start times are debating it off and on for the last few years and the previous discussions have been more around if we should do it at all but i think it seemed like to me that several months ago we as a

041board at least there was some general consensus if not unanimity that it's less about if we do it at all but more about when and how we do it which again we want to get input from the community on that now in terms of us not being able to do it um i guess it's possible but since there are several school districts that have already implemented it um i'm skeptical that there would be something that would say we could not do it other than you know potentially a lack of will right so but again it's the the language i state is that that's our intent um and i think it's important but signaling our intent but of course if something unforeseen happens um that there's nothing that sort of obligates us to doing it but

042i think the important piece is that um the process of how we flesh this out is transparent open and allows input from the communities that are going to be affected you got to belabor the point but does the language with it or without it really matter based on what you're saying our intent is to move forward with this but it doesn't say we shall and there's nothing obligating if we determine that we can't do it so does it really make a difference you mean does it make a difference to take the should the decision you make yeah well i guess it's a it's it's it's debatable right i feel it does because it just eliminates that uh perception that again this is still about if we're going to do it um and gives more impression

043that it's about how we're going to do it but i mean that's my my personal opinion that's why i was recommending taking it off but if there are if there are more board members who would like to keep the language the same then we'll keep it the same and take it to the vote that way next week um so it sounded like we had uh four board members who wanted to strike that phrase the other including me did you count me oh and zephy as well okay so so we have five board members who would prefer to strike that phrase from the language um but again ultimately it'll come down to a vote next week when we vote to approve the goals so one other question if if we were to uh vote to approve

044that and if in the ultimately we've heard back from the public that they're not in favor of it holistically then what happens well i think we as a board would need to take that in consideration and i think we would have the discretion to change course if there is overwhelming pushback or resistance to doing this um again in previous discussions it seemed like there was there was fairly broad-based support for later school start times but when we start getting into the nuts and bolts of like the impact of actually implementing it and what disruptions or changes might be necessary it's possible that there could be a shift in the overall feeling of the community and given the options before us and how to do it that you know there could be overwhelming support the other

045way and just keeping things the same i mean that's possible but i think what's important is that we clearly signal our intent and then we authentically engage the community to let them know what we're thinking and allow them to shape again the how and the details of doing it and through that process we'll find out if there continues to be broad-based support or if there's significant pushback and then we'll adjust and adapt accordingly is that fair paul yeah that's that is fair and again i'm not arguing for or against the concept i am just suggesting that we get the public input first before we make permanent statements in determining direction because as you stated it could come back that generally the public is not for it and if that's the case we're heading in a

046direction that is is not part of public opinion and that's right it's not something we necessarily want to do okay great um before we move off of this one i actually wanted to get any thoughts or comments from our student board reps about the idea of later school start times any thoughts to share carly or alex yeah i would share that uh i think i would go uh for this idea i think i know when virtual when we started i think it was only like 15 minutes later but even those 15 minutes it gave me 15 minutes extra of sleep um and it gave me more energy when i started class so yeah i would i'll go for it i would also definitely be in support of moving the arrival time back and again with

047the virtual school and it being later than normal arrival time for in-person school i know i definitely was more awake for my classes i had time to eat breakfast which was huge because for now i sometimes don't wake up in time to do that which is bad so virtual school and the later arrival time gave me that option and yeah i just think that i was more energized for my classes and ready to go so i would definitely be in support of it okay thanks um board members any uh questions or comments on any of the other goals and priorities if not i have one more so i had another comment for the very last one and that is under the communication area it's a 5b where it talks about a redesign of the district's

048website so for me i felt like i would like a change to the language of this statement i'm totally on board with the idea of totally redesigning the website but after that there is a phrase including choosing a consultant to explore technical options et cetera et cetera um that piece to me um seems like more a description of the means to changing the website where i would like the language to reflect the end goal of a total redesign of the district's website so rather than talking about how to do it i would say that a total redesign of the district's website that makes it more parent-friendly intuitive and engaging something along those lines so how you go about doing it how the administration proceeds with it hiring a consultant or doing an internal or whatever

049i i'm agnostic about my focus would be that the purpose of a total redesign the district's website that left that end goal of it is what should be more clearly stated as part of this and to me it's more along the lines of again more parent friendly intuitive and engaging or some other similar type language i agreed we don't need to be uh too prescriptive because again uh that's not our job uh our job is uh is to tell the uh tell the board what our policy is and that is to be a a a more effective website and we pay them to be able to do that job our job is not to to stand at their elbow so what i'm suggesting is uh striking the phrase including choosing etc through [Music] i guess

050preferences and replace it with again as um a phrase that talks more about the end goal of a total redesign of the district's website which to me would be more along the lines of making it more parent-friendly intuitive and engaging any um any objections to to adjusting the language as such okay all right any other questions or comments on the goals which we will vote on next week okay great so then uh the second item that we're going to be voting on next week under the board president report is approval resolution w1621 which is an amendment to jim's contract for document 62. any questions about that okay yeah it's steffie i have a question i don't actually understand this can you explain it are are we just extending the contract it's not very clear the

051way it's written yeah so um jim has a multi-year contract with the board but within that contract annually we approve uh his his annual increase and that annual increase is based on his overall evaluation from us as a board so once the evaluation is completed then that gets factored into the annual amendment to his multi-year contract and that's what this represents okay and so we don't share the evaluation the evaluation i believe is um at least a version of it is like filed with the state and and uh publicly available is that correct jim that's my understanding there needs to be something on our website uh statement about the evaluation i know do you know danielle the exact i know we have it on there from year to year yeah the statement has to go

052on the um website but um the actual evaluation itself i don't believe is put up there jeff if you want to chime in the the statement only is whether the superintendent met the goals or did not meet the goals but the exact details of the evaluation is confidential as it would be for any other employee of the organization but whether the goals were met versus not is statutory so we have to reveal that on the website okay and and to your knowledge danielle or jim is that is that on the website already it is i don't know about for this year but it had it is in previous years once this year is over we'll i mean this this motion isn't done we'll post it there after board approval okay um so i have a

053follow-up question then i i wasn't aligned to the evaluation so um [Music] i mean do i vote no for this you can yes okay or or you could abstain but the abstention is almost like an o yeah okay thank you okay and that's it for the board president report so we're going to move on to the superintendent report jim okay thank you some informational items only the first one is we're going to with carly's newfound ways of getting to school and challenges that encounter in the early morning hours we'll find a way to ping her in some fashion social media or email or something a little earlier carly i know you can do it the recognition we have is one that we've been holding off on and frankly this is something that is it's a

054little bit late but one of our special education supervisors ms kate yacovino recently completed her certification for uh what's called a board-certified behavior analyst bcba that's an incredibly intensive uh course of study that is uh very specific to typically younger students and it's not that kate will necessarily be gunned down there and it's a one-on-one methodology she'll be doing it herself necessarily but now she knows exactly how to do it she'll be able to supervise those who do i think this is a tremendous feather in her cap but also tremendous value for us as a district so my congratulations to kate for that very nice uh accomplishment um next we have their official 10th day enrollment figures um and uh katie want to flash those up on the screen we've got uh our 10th day

055which is you know this is the is the thing the state uses officially it was a little later this year due to our weather day and our two religious holidays but as of uh september 17th these are our numbers and uh if you could scroll down just a tiny bit please yeah you can see that our i get my own copy here too our overall number of elementary students uh jumped a little bit this is compared to last year's or actually uh as the end of last year uh up a little bit and then if you could scroll down to the bottom there the overall number of students increasing is 164 which is about 3.35 um spread across the grades um and then we have in a second we'll show you some historical trends on

056enrollment but that's an enrollment jump that we would have predicted only because of the dislocations that kovan created last year it's not really going to be helpful for us in terms of um establishing a three-year or five-year trend because we've got some rather significant hiccups uh caused by the pandemic but it is significant in that all that hiring that danielle was speaking of earlier in the meeting and all those new hires were generated by these new numbers um so i think that's that's important you should also know and there's notes at the bottom there this the k to five numbers include the students who are currently choosing the wizard higgins virtual academy for the first semester a total of 43 and they may or may not choose to come back in january in which case

057we have saved the spot for them they're in these these figures whereas in the secondary grades they're broken out that's not quite the same structure and also it reflects the 11 students who chose to repeat a grade per their rights according to acts 66 so those 11 are back in the same grade as they were last year uh excuse me of those 11 uh what what grades were they uh most in it was this elementary or middle or high school um across the board i think probably if i mean a couple maybe in their primary grades k and one a little bit more than than the others but it's across the board i mean 11 is a very small number compared to other districts so it's just almost a footnote okay so the second page

058uh is a look at the historical averages by school over the last five years and then this one and that i think shows some interesting trends uh starting at the top there with bluebell you can see it's gone from at five years ago 411 students to over 500 now and that reflects things in the community developments that that we had on the horizon again i would hesitate to draw any conclusions from this year's numbers until we get a trend line that includes post pandemic hopefully uh and then each of the other schools uh have gone up as well as you can see and we responded to the growth at stony with the construction project um that that everybody saw and we'll take a closer look at next meeting so that will increase our capacity there

059overall k-5 capacity has gone out or enrollment as you can see has gone up what's that over almost 300 or so over the last five years of substantial and then that's going to play out in middle and then later high school as the years go by there's not quite as much growth in those two schools over the last five years but that's to be expected because there's a time lag between when growth in the secondary grades is reflected um it just needs the kids need to work their way through the system jim i think obviously the last year or so have been strange in terms of enrollment because of covid but if you take a look at the 16-17 school year to this year about a five-year period the district overall has experienced um noticeable

060growth i would kind of sort of back of the envelope say we've had 10 or 11 percent increase in total enrollment over that period of time which is i mean i think fantastic in terms of us you know being a thriving and and growing district but um obviously something for us to to continue to monitor as a board given our our school buildings and taking a look and keeping an eye on the capacity utilization of those buildings but overall i think it's much better to be in a growing school district than in a shrinking one and uh wisconsin has grown quite a bit over the last five years as these numbers attest to all right thanks thank you the next informational item is an update on the staff vaccine program and as you remember we

061we implemented the last meeting something that that has any staff or staff members who are in the classroom on a regular basis who are unvaccinated will be tested twice a week and i can tell you that of once we sorted out all of the uh the data and the submissions and the cards and whatnot i'm very happy to say that over 90 of our certificated staff are vaccinated 91 to be exact so that's that's actually uh uh something i think we can all be very proud of 84 of district staff overall are vaccinated and that's resulting in about 55 or so uh staff members required to be tested and they are we have this system set up uh it's it's working in each of the schools and you remember that this is an important precursor

062for us to understand how testing works and to implement it a little slowly because it could well come a time when we want to do it on a grander scale for either more employees or more students or both right now it's only the this this subset of people in the buildings jim do we know um the positive cases that we've had so far how many have been with vaccinated as opposed to unvaccinated uh students or staff or both or uh i mean basically staff because this is that's who we're testing right now right yeah uh there's not a whole lot i mean we'll get to that when we start sharing the numbers let's if we could just table that for a second uh i don't know that we'll be able to post the type but

063we have i think five so i don't know if it would be a useful percentage anyway but we can take a look at that for sure questions on on this okay jim um well first off i think the vaccination rate for teachers at 91 percent is fantastic and overall 84 is is really strong too so that's great um so just to clarify those who are unvaccinated are subjected to uh once a week or twice a week testing now two times twice a week okay all right thank you okay and then the last information item is is something we added in a blue sheet it's uh to share with the board the plans uh for senior banquet see if the board likes the idea or not and also the plans for homecoming spirit week which uh

064alex shared with us and carly shared with us in terms of homecoming spirit week there's lots of activities those are all pretty much student driven student developed outside kind of in the works the senior bank on the other hand is one of those big events that is coming it's in actually in november but we need to make a decision on that now in order to get things reserved and deposits made so uh with welcome board input on those i know the board would prefer to have input on things like this rather than have it be presented to you as a done deal jim i believe you sent us a draft of some of those uh activities well it's yes so that there's a there's uh the first i guess we could deal with homecoming spirit

065week first since that's uh you know coming up um like basically next week those are those basically there's daily things there's come some uh theme days there's some activities like the i also talk about like powder puff football some 3 basketball just fun stuff to make the week fun culminating in homecoming that's pretty standard annual standard events the senior banquet is also uh fairly common for non-pandemic times in that the proposition is students will be on the spirit of philadelphia have a nice banquet some have some fun but with the mitigations regarding covid uh we won't be able to or there will be masks involved there will be music playing but no dancing uh there'll be a buffet dinner but of course you have to unmask for dinner but it's sort of the same things

066that happen to school try to remain distanced as much as possible one of the main uh differences this year compared to others is students will drive themselves through the spirit of philadelphia not on a bus so um you know they have some fun ideas uh pie eating contest or name that tune trivia but it's it's not going to be the same as normal in that it's not not uh dancing due to the to the mitigations jim i know we were talking about hi gents it's sophie hey zephy uh tracy was just starting to to speak after treatment oh sorry no problem um i was just going to say i know we were talking about no dancing but is there an issue with having dancing outside on the spirit of philadelphia they are outside on the

067boat as well right yeah it's just the can't ensure that if it's masked it could need to be three feet um and there's a feeling that we can't ensure that i mean but if the board would like to do otherwise we certainly can i'm not sure how you have music and expect them to stand there and not do anything about it i i think that that was affected with prom as well and that was some of the feedback that we got that there should be some way of allowing kids whether it's distance or at certain times allow them the opportunity to get up and dance a little bit uh and i think that can be accomplished if we do it creatively without just saying you have to listen to it and not feel the urge

068to get up and dance and i think they should have that opportunity to some extent so well and that's kind of why i brought up about allowing them to dance outside because it's open air and if they stay masked and they're less than the three feet dancing as long as they're they're masked they have to be three feet or more but yeah right then you know maybe that's something that can be considered you know to allow them that to enjoy the music that's there but i think it's a great idea that we're doing the senior banquet and the homecoming spirit week anything that we can do to promote you know school spirit let the seniors be seniors as i think is a great idea i applaud the you know high school team for putting all

069this together is is there a requirement for the students to be vaccinated or do we know how what percentage of students might be vaccinated no there's no requirement for students at this time jim is there a plan for the bonfire this year or is that not an option uh yes that's for the homecoming um and there is that is part of the mix i don't think they'll be dancing then but what what do i know that could be i suppose zappy did you get a chance to ask your question no um do we have feedback from the from the seniors about their interest in doing it this way is my one question and my second question is is this only for our seniors or are they allowed to bring a gas like how is that

070handled this is uh yes this is the senior banquet so it's only for seniors and the senior advisors and senior class officers came up with these ideas well let's ask one of our uh high school seniors himself alex gendaya have you heard about the plans for uh senior banquet and some of these other things we've been talking about and if so any thoughts or perspectives offer um i heard briefly about the senior banquet but um as far as homecoming goes um i think everyone just looking forward to it i don't think there's any concern over the distancing with that i know a lot of the events are outside so i think that should be good and everyone's just excited for it overall okay thanks so jim i guess what are you looking what do you

071want from the the board regarding these items uh well with regard to senior banker we need to know if the board would like to go forward as the plan would like to have it with dancing i mean i we don't want to present something that's a foregone conclusion so that's this is the opportunity to to decide and then we'll we'll certainly implement whatever the board would like us to do on this uh that's not a problem it just we just need to know well i mean i guess maybe the way to think about it is uh are there any board members who have any objections or concerns about the plan that uh jim and the high school team have proposed for for high school seniors no this is an optional event right so i mean

072no objection if you're wording it as objection to how it's brought forth then i would say that i believe that they should have dancing involved maybe in the outdoor area that would be my input on it so i guess if we're objecting then i would have to be objecting to it as is but would like the dancing part added into it i agree with tracy on that one i think it's a great idea i think they should absolutely do it i think they deserve it they should have it and part of that i think comes with also i think they'll they'll be mindful i think they'll be responsible and if we can uh hold an outdoor activity with allowing them to god lose or dance a little bit i think we should i'm getting this

073vision of jim as the as the reverend in footloose he was against uh dancing for the town that before jim gets motion sickness he won't be nowhere near the spirit marshall in the role of kevin bacon [Music] um we're getting ready yeah yeah so jim i think i think people generally are are supportive of the plans for uh the high school seniors and um would strongly recommend uh allowing dancing okay we'll we'll make it now we just we clear we're gonna try as best we can we'll ask for a best faith effort to keep the distancing but we do not feel like we can guarantee that just to be clear on that okay i and uh i'm gonna make a comment that uh that anyone who knows me would find incredibly laughable but uh i

074remember my seventh grade dance uh again ten thousand maybe eleven thousand years ago wait did they have music back then uh yes but it was uh banging on rocks with uh with clubs as i remember but uh the uh the rule then was that the students weren't supposed to touch when they were dancing uh that they had to be uh a distance apart and uh i thought that that was also a novel idea but uh again uh delving into my uh extensive dance repertoire uh what about line dancing certainly that uh you know that is uh has dave has uh you know distancing already built into it and uh so that you know that's a possibility and uh i've been to enough weddings where uh where that has gone long i've uh i've attempted many

075times to do the electric slide and uh with no great success but uh that's one possibility again do not use me as an example okay i think we got it joe i think it's important to note nobody puts baby in a corner and i think that our students should be allowed to choose the uh dance of choice and not necessarily organize line dancing yeah you're right okay okay i think uh jim i think the the boards provide some guidance on those and uh with that we will move on to the assistant superintendent report when yay once i compose myself thank you yes um two informational items one is a brief summary of the staff and service days in august which seemed like forever ago at this point um our faculty engaged in of course the

076typical department meetings um they also had data analysis sessions and they were encouraged to practice creating data reports and we provided time for what we call curriculum step up and step down conversations for faculty to work with alike grade level teams as well as teams above and below to really focus on identifying any potential gaps in curriculum and instruction from the last year and a half um there was valuable time for teachers to focus on ensuring the success of all learners they talked about and discussed and shared ideas around pre-teaching and re-teaching pre-assessing and reteaching those foundational concepts and skills they focus on thinking about how they would implement differentiated instruction this school year as well as planning for purposeful uses of technology for this school year so we really carved out that time for

077them to be able to engage in these discussions we also carved out time for teachers to plan ways to establish their classroom communities by exploring various resources that are going to be added to our curriculum sharepoint site for our staff to access all year long that helped to think about ways to build relationships with students and reconnect with them to create those welcoming classroom environments which we know is critical to helping students develop a sense of belonging and we know that that's important for any start of the school year but this school year especially considering what our students have have gone through with this pandemic are instructional aides engaged in learning opportunities that focus on self-awareness and reflective practices for equitable classrooms and trauma-informed practices so these are just the sampling of the many opportunities

078that our faculty and staff engaged in in terms of learning and collaborating during those august and service days and of course we're off off to the year at this point but we're just wanted to share that brief summary the next informational item is a very very brief presentation that i would like to share that focuses on supporting students who quarantine we know our instructional model this school year is for 100 in person so our students who are not in who are quarantining are not able to join the class virtually when they're not able to come to the school we know though that it is important for us to find ways for students to connect and check in with teachers during that quarantine time so we'll go to the next slide typically in prior years pre-covet

079work has been typically assigned asynchronously for students who were not able to come into school this year one of the things that we want to ensure that we are including is of course we'll continue to provide assigned asynchronous schoolwork but we would like to plan for of course sending that technology device home we know at the elementary level the devices don't go home every day they stay in the school but when we know a student needs a quarantine we want to ensure that that technology device gets sent home we want to ensure that assignments and supplemental resources will be available in our online platforms as you can see outlined there seesaw teams and schoology our teachers will ensure that the focus of those assignments are on essential content only and that we're being flexible with

080deadlines which is critical as our students are out and lastly we want to make sure that we're including ways for teachers and or counselors to offer to meet with students virtually for check-ins and to help them identify additional supports um for for when they're in that quarantine period so they need support with school assignments with school work there are various ways for students to get connected to those opportunities for example at the high school level they can have virtual access to the math lab in the writing lab at the middle school level they can have virtual access to the middle school after school program and the virtual stars tutoring program and at the elementary level we are planning to put in place an opportunity for virtual access to after school academic support in addition to

081those academic focus times um our plan will include our teachers and again i said teachers or counselors checking in with students at various times throughout their school day when they can find the time available to check in with students um and that really is to focus on connecting with students so those check-ins are not instructional times it's not synchronous instruction it's intended to be an opportunity to connect with students while they're out because we know the emotional and social toll that may take on students and so those check-ins with the teachers will support them in that regard while access to those opportunities for academic support will support them in completing assignments and answering questions about about any homework um we know that there are families who would prefer for us to have synchronous instruction for

082students who quarantine it's simply not a part of our instructional plan for this year our model with being 100 in person our teachers are grateful for this structure which allows them to focus on us the students and having our teachers have consistent daily practices with students every day in person we got a great deal of feedback last year with at the secondary level with that hybrid model with teachers teaching to two modalities students in person as well as students who were uh joining in um via teams and um and there were some challenges with that and uh and so we do not recommend that at this time in terms of having teachers needing to divide their attention during instructional time our teachers last year as we know they rose to the occasion they did wonderful

083work under those circumstances which required us to have that in place because we needed to have six foot distancing in the classroom so rotating between those two groups was critical in order for us to do that um however this year that that is not our model and we we would not um recommend that at this time so we want to get some supports in place though recognizing the need for students to connect with teachers and with their peers as well as the need for some students to connect with those academic supports and finally i want to um just draw attention to an additional mitigation effort which is very much connected to the issue of quarantining um because we do intend at the k-6 levels in fact many of our schools started today but this week

084all of our schools uh with students in grades k-6 will be adjusting their lunch areas to reflect six-foot distancing and that will significantly reduce the number of students who are identified as close context and therefore required to to quarantine i know uh later this evening ms carianakis will be reviewing some of the numbers around covid but this is something that we we believe is is really essential to helping ensure more students get to stay in school in person okay thank you um the questions for money ron and then amy yeah uh how many of our students are in quarantine uh at this time i know that number is coming up a little later this evening um i want to say you don't want to misspeak though i know that's a part of um figure yeah

08590 to 100 students right now and we we know that that number will we know for a fact that number will decrease once we make this change to the lunch areas um students will no longer be close contacts at the lunch period if they are six foot distance when they're not wearing their masks at the start of this school year our lunch period a lunch areas had students that were three four foot distance and so um when cases would arise that is where a lot of our students in terms of close contacts that we were finding were in those lunch areas so making this adjustment to reflect six foot distancing is going to have a significant we we anticipate a significant decrease in the number of students who are required to quarantine because it will

086have a significant reduction in the number of students who are close contacts from those lunch areas amy thank you i'm just wondering is it possible to have our teachers just record their lectures in lessons to have them uploaded for the students to listen to i know it's hard to speak to both the students at home virtually as well as the students in the classroom but i just wonder if it wouldn't be beneficial to our students like as a parent i know in like spring of 2020 it was really helpful to have like the videos of our teachers teaching the lessons so that we could log on it was really helpful for me i've elementary age kids to assist them with doing their work that they needed to do but just getting the work and not

087having an actual lesson and if we're just having like daily check-ins and it's not really teaching the material i'm just wondering if it would be helpful just to have recorded sessions that you at least can hear the teacher and listen to the material thank you for that that was one of the many ideas that we brainstormed um the concern is the additional burden that it places on the teachers to record those lessons but it's certainly something that we could explore if the board were to request that we wanted to ensure that our teachers were not having the the added work of because they're not teaching to the computer um so that would require some technology exploration and or would require them to be near their computers to record um so that that was not a

088part of the recommendation at this time are there headsets possibly that could be worn or some sort of device that they might be standing right next to their computer but again i don't want them to be distracted from the students in the classroom but something that still allows them to record to help those students at home certainly something that could be support there is camera technology that exists for that purpose but that is a technology investment that the district will have to look at and is that something if we could look into that like i don't imagine we need one for each teacher i'm hoping it's something that can be sanitized and you know if i don't have any big quarantining in my class it could be passed to the next teacher who does have

089something somebody quarantining in their class so if we can maybe look into that that would be great and then my other question was the asynchronous days that our students are doing do those count towards their total instructional days for the year it's not count as absence that's correct they're not counted toward their um absences where they would be triggered for truancy no okay thank you so wait when you say that does that mean it's going to show up as an absent on their report it shouldn't be the uh it's my understanding that the state has an actual code that is used on the uh for uh referring to absences uh under quarantine we do have a local code that we're using for our attendance clerks that's correct we're quarantining i had a couple of questions

090also the quarantine period now five days plus a negative test or is it 10 days what what's the quarantine period now it varies it's not a straightforward answer it depends on the circumstances whether a student is vaccinated or unvaccinated whether they have a test or not whether they're having symptoms or not so that's a difficult question to give you a flat answer but it could it could range anywhere from um three to ten days let's say depending on the circumstances around the case do we have any idea how frequently students who are in quarantine than develop an infection i don't have that data but i'm sure that's something we could explore dr dewan i i do have a concern with the fact that we're not talking a day or two we're talking three to ten

091days where kids are not in school for a sustained period of time not a couple days on a couple days off but you're talking up to 10 days and i think we should look into a way to allow those students at home whether it's to participate or not to at least plug in or be virtual or something because we're looking at 90 students so far hopefully that those numbers don't grow we're not talking about the most significant part of our schools so it's not in every class but i think we owe it to these kids to not allow them to fall behind uh by giving him an opportunity to at least watch the class one to engage two to be part of the class if they're gonna miss a week and a half or more

092and you don't know if it could turn into a second or a third quarantine we have students who could miss a considerable amount of time for the school year and to think that they won't be in school or have that interaction at all i think we're all thankful that we are able to be in school 100 we want everybody in but i think we also have to be mindful of those who can't maybe through no fault of their own or or whatever the circumstance may be i'd like to see if we can come up with some way whether it is um as as amy said a an earpiece or a computer in the classroom and maybe it's not completely interactive but at least an opportunity for the students to engage and we don't lose them

093for that long without that um in addition um is there any consideration regarding the busing where there are potential kids who have departed who still go home on a bus if they then have to quarantine we want to make sure we don't cause anybody aggravation thinking that they have now been on a bus on the way home with somebody who is going to be quarantining and they could be potentially uh either infected or exposed so that's another area i'd like to see some additional looking into as well i i also would agree with uh the idea of having the lesson at least uh being broadcast from the classroom even if it's just using the uh the uh the camera on the on the teacher's laptop so that the students can uh can see what's going

094on in the classroom and uh and have a uh uh have a uh have the uh the teacher can wear a loop so so that uh the sound would also be and uh if the students ask questions then uh that can happen in the uh in the checkout time that you've already mentioned so the idea of making the students feel as if they are part of the class even if they're not uh physically there and i i know i'm just uh saying how you know i don't exactly have a magic wand not even a technological one but i think it's something for us to uh to consider uh if you can remember back when we talked about having uh the combination virtual and uh and in class uh physically in class how uh it seemed

095like it was going to be impossible it was difficult but we we managed to pull it off for quite a few months for and for our students and i think this effort uh is something that we should really look uh forward and as i i agree that i hope that once we separate our students out to a greater degree at lunch the uh the reason to uh to quarantine will probably go down but uh we still have uh potentially somewhere between 50 to 100 students at a time uh for three to ten days not being part of the classroom and this uh this feeling of disconnect and exile is not something that we want to encourage and our students considering what they've already gone through these past 18 months we don't want to compound it

096teachers move around in the classroom especially especially k through 6. i don't see how you can possibly have something that's gonna have students know what's going on and try to engage when they're absent i mean there are lots of times through other years where kids are absent for a week or two they give them homework they work on it it's not the end of the year that they've at the end of the world that they've missed some days they're able to make things up the idea of having recorded lessons that's an awful lot to put on the teachers yeah kind of building on ronnie's point is that we did do hybrid education for a significant part of the year last year and we did make it work but i think there was also a recognition

097that that hybrid education experience was um subpar for both the in person and the virtual students relative to an in-person education and i think that's why there was so much emphasis uh in bringing everyone back full-time so um yes we did make it work but it's because we had to it's not that it was like recommended or actually preferred and to put a burden on the teacher to have to do some kind of i don't know recording or whatever afterwards i think you know it doesn't acknowledge that teaching or teachers today and the way they run and manage the classroom is very different than it may have been back when we were kids when i was a kid in school teachers tended to stand in front of the classroom and lecture so yeah you could

098record what they said and then you could listen to it afterwards but um these days the teachers do very little of that or a lot less let's say standing in front of class and lecturing the entire period it's a lot more interactive a lot of small group discussion a lot of breaking up into like individual activities and so just having like an open mic listening to that i don't think it'd be very valuable or helpful for someone at home because it's very disjointed and it's not designed to be listened afterwards um so that's another thing the the third thing i'll reference is that 90 to 100 kids currently on quarantine right now is is a raw number that is seems kind of high but put it into perspective of the total enrollment of the district

099is about 5 000 kids so we're talking in the neighborhood of two percent or less of the population that is currently in quarantine um as ronnie said previous years someone might have mono they might be out for two weeks someone might have i don't know like a severe broken leg or the interaction or something they'd be out for two weeks and um the plan that we presented here is more supports and services than we typically provided pre-covet and it does offer live touch points for the students as well as access to academic content as well so i mean for me i wouldn't be you know making a big push to try to sort of like go through gyrations to get some kind of like static subpar recording to these students who are in quarantine because

100i don't think number one it's an imposition on the teachers but number two i don't think it's actually that effective educationally for the kids who are quarantining but i guess i'm curious like all right again we have actual students um here um i'd like to hear from our student board reps if you guys were quarantining um what do you think of the idea of having like a i guess audio recording of the classes that you missed um yeah you know what what are your thoughts on that on that approach yeah so i was actually just thinking about this and uh it kind of applies to what happened last week i had to miss a day of school and i did have a little illness scared but um all is well but it was a serious

101thought that went through my head that if i did have to meet miss two weeks of school um that would like definitely bring me back um i know there is some like procedures that are in play uh to help make sure you can meet with your teachers and you only go over like the essential work but i think definitely if we could do something whether that is like an audio recording um or even like if we can do kind of what we have with office hours um but if we do like maybe after school um even like a five minute call with your teacher um at the end of the day i think i think we need something because that is a serious thing that i think uh many people who may be sick they

102may be scared to miss out and that could uh affect people's health at school so if there is anything i think uh using an audio recording or meeting with your teacher for five minutes i think um that'd be really beneficial so alex if you had to choose between uh meeting live with teachers and check-ins or listening to your recording of the classes that you missed which would be preferable to you i would prefer the yeah i would prefer the uh even like a five-minute live call just because i know the audio recording you have a 45 minute one or even like on block days that's an hour and a half um it can be hard listening to it for that long and staying focused so i think it could be best just to get really

103concise talk to your teacher and uh like catch up on your information that you missed how are you i don't know if carly's in here anymore i think i know she was happy yeah i think we lost her okay no problem hey um i had a couple of comments so um i know that some of the support offerings that we have for the middle school and the high school is great are all those reactive in the sense that the student has to do the outreach or can we um kind of have a little bit of an outreach to ensure that they're supported and then for the k through five can't we use some of those star studios like uh volunteers to help out with the k through five i especially worry about the k through

104three grade so that would be something that maybe we can see if that's a possibility and then i i saw your comment that you know deadlines would be flexible which is great but how about tests um especially in the middle school and the high school would there be more second chance opportunities were will there be kind of additional support i just know how critical some of these tests are and how they impact your grade and just you know having one bad kind of grade can really spiralize someone to very be stressed out about that so can we think about how we're actually testing these kids i mean we're still in the covid drag from last year and not to have some kind of mitigation for these kids especially if they're out on quarantine makes me

105a little worried thank you i guess my one question or i guess my comment would be um with the changing of the lunch how many of those do we know how many of those 90s are like k through 5 the 90 kids that are quarantined we do we're going to show those numbers in a little bit tracy so hold on if it's a large number of the 90 that are k through 5 then we think by changing the lunge to the 6 foot that'll alleviate maybe a chunk of the kids that are quarantining off the bat right um so that's a good thing and then i do like the idea of the uh that alex was talking about with the office hours was that part of the plan that that we were putting forth wasn't

106that something on there about the office hours there are opportunities um at each level for students to connect with teachers to get that academic support so at the secondary level it's a math lab and writing lab that exists so those opportunities will be made virtual for students and at the middle school the stars tutoring program as well as the after school club students would be able to access both of those virtually and at the elementary level we are creating an opportunity for after school sort of homework support schoolwork support for students to be able to connect virtually while they're in quarantine okay thank you thank you okay well many way thank you for that update that takes us now to the board solicitor report jeff yes um board members in executive session uh presumptively reviewed

107two settlement agreements for student number seven eight seven eight nine nine and seven eight eight zero nine seven based upon documents nine one and nine two appended to the agenda and we will be recommending approval uh for those two uh settlement agreements as presented questions comments right thank you jeff that concludes my report thank you the board secretary report wait yeah thank you uh no informational items and uh i have uh up for approval at the next meeting the august 23rd regular public board meeting minutes per document and one that concludes uh the secretary's report wait can you continue with the treasure report please thank you no informational items and we will present for acceptance and minuting the treasurer's report for august 31st 2021 per document 11-1 and that is the only item up for

108approval okay any uh questions or comments for wait all right well moving on to the director of human resources report danielle all right good evening again for tonight's report there are no informational items however for your review are action items 12 b 1 through 12. so one is retirements resignations terminations appointments leave of absences and extracurricular resignations and appointments two is the approval of the salary degree changes for the 21 22 school year each fall our professional staff are able to submit for movement based on their educational attainment approval three is approval of the updated inductee mentor list for the school year four is the approval of the high school year-long extracurricular activities five is the approval of additions to the volunteer lists six is the approval of the revised job description for the supervisor

109of operations there's just a couple changes there for your review seven is the approval of additions to the homebound instruction list for the 21-22 school year it is the approval of employees achieving the 10-year status as we presented earlier this evening nine is the approval of new additions to the substitute list for this school year and then ten approval of the sds uh addendum agreement effective october 5th through the end of the school year and that document is asking requesting an increase to our teacher sub rate that would more closely align to districts in our area and help us increase the number of daily daily per diem subs we have in our schools and to be more attractive in that area 11 is approval to increase the transportation substitute bus driver rate to 30 30

110per hour this was also presented in the buildings and ground meeting and again to help us attract uh more sub bus drivers for transportation needs and then 12 approval to create a one-year temporary job position for a staff nurse a floater slash contact tracer this position is being requested based on the burden of our current nursing staff they're spending most of their days contact tracing they're getting calls late in the day having them so they have to contact trace at night and on weekends and this is creating a burden because they're not able to get to the serious needs during the day this would help ease that burden in order to do this contact tracing we are hoping with the changes in the lunch that there are less children that we have to contact trace

111but as dr chris field mentioned earlier this position would also be helping with the testing program right now it's just staff but should we want to expand that to uh to test students or additional staff we we will need that capacity in this position so that concludes my report and i am happy to answer any of your questions any questions for danielle okay thanks we're going to move on to the communications committee report zephy hi um katie if you're on awesome so we have uh some numbers we've changed a little bit the format as to how we're presenting this information um on this slide we're looking at on campus in person positive covet 19 cases and this is just um in person within the time period of infection so you can see we have a

112total of 41 at the moment with um 18 on the week of 9 13 and 23 the week of 9 20. so we're no longer doing rolling um numbers and katie the way i read this and correct me if i'm wrong this is a cumulative number the 41 correct that's correct yep um so you could see the numbers here next slide is off campus covet cases and so these are reported cases of either student or staff that are not on campus um during their infection period and you can see here we have a total cumulative number of lemon 11. the next the next slide is actually um what a lot of people had questions on so far and this is the number of quarantining students and so this is as of september 27th and you

113can see that we have a total of 116 with a total of with 111 of that being students and five and you can see that the breakout is kind of equal i guess across buildings except for the high school um and you know uh dr dewani mentioned this that we will be separating lunch at the k through six to six feet so hopefully that will help um but some of the um information that's been received from the nurses is that some of this exposure can be due to sports as well and i think the last slide is just a definition of what's on and off campus i think this is a really good point because i do think it's a little confusing so um you know i'm a high school parent so i get an

114email when there's pieces at the high school um so sometimes the cases may not always match up with what's being reported and that's because when they do the contact tracing um the they do assess that 48 hours so that can alter some of those numbers but the nurses and the department of health health are working very closely to keep an eye on all of these things i want to thank katie for pulling these new slides together i think they're very helpful and we'll continue to show them at these board meetings does anyone have any questions okay do we currently have the ability to test at the schools so if someone does test positive are we able to do a test there at the school for anyone that may have been exposed no not for students

115um you have to we can build at that point but we would only have a rapid test anyway uh we wouldn't have a pcr on site so we probably wouldn't need parental consent right correct and i was just wondering if if a parent consents if we have that ability uh to do it so that they can get it sooner rather than having to wait it sounds like we currently don't have the tests uh on site or the capability or supply really for uh for students right okay crazy so i was just gonna make a comment of the it looked like of the 116 uh pretty much 70 some that looked like 75 maybe our elementary level so uh hopefully once we get the new numbers of the distance lunches we'll be able to take a

116look at that and see if that is actually truly making a difference in the elementary level that's a lot of elementary kids you know the middle school at the 27 and high school actually is very good uh this time around but um yeah it'll be interesting to see the difference of the lunch the distancing of the lunches for those numbers danielle i have a question about the staff column how many of those are teachers uh well you can see uh you know what i have to look at my list to be honest with you um obviously those in the buildings uh could i could be a teacher or a classroom assistant um i don't i have to pull it up but i can get that information for you and i'm just wondering if we have

117any issues this year with getting substitutes since we're probably fighting with other districts that have similar issues yes it is an issue covet is part of that um we've had uh vacancies in elementary especially and i think it is because students in the in those grade levels aren't vaccinated we have a lot less per diem subs that are willing to pick up on a daily basis we have more uh daily steps that we'll pick up in the high school however um so again you know it was one of the reasons why we thought maybe we believe a increase in the rate could could be helpful thank you all right zephy uh katie thanks for uh that update and um thank you for your continued efforts in uh trying to assemble the information in a user-friendly

118and informative way for us and we'll definitely keep an eye on all that stuff as the year progresses next up we have the curriculum technology committee report ronnie actually uh joe i i had um asked that we kind of go over um um what the protocol is dell for covid19 there's been a lot of questions around you know what when how and um it is confusing i mean dr dewani kind of made it very clear like there you could be in quarantine anywhere between three and ten so i had asked dr cripfield to kind of give us kind of some of the more frequently asked questions to ensure that our our our community is aware okay yeah okay um well lots of questions are uh received so first of all we do have a frequently

119asked question page on the website that is updated and as you might imagine there are lots of details and nuances to questions so it's difficult to answer everyone's questions uh exactly the way they would like them but there's some broad categories of things that might help and the first one of which is is who is contacted about what and then when so and and a couple parents have reached out with questions and and i know they're asking the buildings as well the way this works is our first priority when we are made aware of a positive case is to do the contact racing which as we spoke about earlier is taking a lot of time and it needs to and then from then the first priority before anyone else hears about anything is to reach

120out phone call to the people who've been determined to be close contacts so that takes a while it and so with uh our our uh social media capabilities out there certain people learn about tests and positive outcomes before we report it and we're not slowly reporting or we're not ignoring the case we're doing what we need to do first which is the courtesy of anybody who's close contact has to be reached first so if that's only two people it's not a big deal on a certain instance if it's ten of course it takes longer then we send uh communications out at the elementary level we would send a communication to the uh all parents and guardians in that class let's say the second grade class that there's a positive case of course there's no names

121and we also based on parent feedback we now send a letter or an email to the entire school saying there was a case and we posted on the website and the slides were the the um screenshots we saw so the people who are interested in the big picture can see that as well slightly different at middle now and in high school and there's not a classroom so we just the old school gets it as zephy noted she gets emails from if somebody just paused about the high school there's a [Music] desire slash craving out there for more information more details and i think it's important to note that the reason that we don't share more details is because we have this balancing act of trying to protect the information that a student has health information

122that is legally confidential and we can't provide as much information as everyone would like because it's very likely that someone could then triangulate those pieces of information and ascertain which student tested positive and that's absolutely protected illegally so this is the dilemma we're up against everyone said well i need to know this and i need to know now about the bus and the answer is well we're sharing out as much as we can without compromising the students legal rights it seems frustrating at times there's nobody more frustrated than the student the staff at the schools the principal and the nurses who have to field all the complaints about why we aren't telling them exactly where it happened and when and how many kids were involved we can't even tell you disclose how many kids were

123close contacts that's also not information so that's those are most of the questions we're receiving uh in terms of the faqs and we try to answer them as as completely as we can but sometimes what happens is the answer isn't what people want to hear i don't know how to put it and we can't we don't have a different answer when that happens we just have to try to explain the why and just have to move on jim thank you for follow up to that can you describe a little bit about how our contact tracers go about doing the contact tracing like for example my daughter her second grade class uh for encore splits with another class so now she's excited with another group of students and then um i'm just wondering like do we

124talk to those students because she's obviously with them more than 15 minutes do we talk to the teacher do we talk to the encore teacher like who are we talking to to find out who they've been exposed to so um that's a good question the answer is so contact tracing has to do with if um somebody's tested positive how many people were technically close contacts by the definitions we received from montgomery county office of public health so we only have to ascertain how many students were within in the case of a student inside mat and everybody's all messed up how many students were closer than three feet for more than 15 minutes that's the definition that we work with so as we discussed earlier that really gets us to the lunchroom 99 times out of

125a hundred because our teachers are very very careful about not having kids closer than three feet for more than 15 minutes so there's no need to talk to anyone in the classroom if there's no contact and we would we would talk to the teachers say hey you've been invited by the rules were they ever sitting in the rug for 25 minutes shoulder shoulder the answer is they shouldn't have been and thankfully they aren't but we have been unable to to crack that lunch nut until very recently so in an encore class they're they follow the same rules they can't they're not allowed to sit more than three feet or closer to three feet if they do happen to rub elbows or something it if it's less than 15 minutes it's not a closed contact so

126no one gets notified so how are we doing that like a back to school night i saw like classrooms like we have we're not all facing forward this year we're sitting in clusters like the teachers making sure that those clusters like that the students aren't getting that close to one another yes the the teachers all know that there's a the the student exemption is three feet as long as everybody's masked up um and when in older kids it has to do with vaccination too but that's a different matter and younger kids who can't get vaccinated just yet uh teachers are all extremely aware of the importance of three feet and what about like encore like stony doesn't have like dedicated encore rooms so we have like art on the cart in the classroom and like

127i said my daughter's class is a split session so her class goes with another class so now we have a classroom with two classes in it for an encore like how are they managing that to make sure that they're distanced i don't know of any circumstances which are closer than three feet do you wait or no we don't we're not aware of any any times when students have to be less than three feet other than life okay all right thank you stephanie has that covered the faqs yeah one minor thing um that wanted to add during our facility meeting last week one of the things that we we are asking our administration to look into is the potential of looking at a a bigger room for our board meetings we love this hybrid option not

128actually i would not be able to attend today if it wasn't an option because i had another work commitment so we plan to keep those we plan to keep uh zoom questions an option um but there is um investigation happening to see if we can have a bigger space but um it would have to support all the technology which is part of the hurdle if there's new information we'll share that out but that's all i had thank you very much great thank you zoe all right now we'll go back to the curriculum and technology committee report ronnie thank you joe there are no informational items and dr duan i'm going to turn over all of these action items to you thank you we have action items 14 b1 through 14 b7 item 1 is an

129agreement with the montgomery county intermediate unit for services related to title 1 and title 2 federal programs and coordination for services with our non-public schools these agreements are going to be or are renewed for three years so to be effective 2021 through 2024. item two we're seeking renewal for our agreement with the montgomery county intermediate unit for services related to title iii this is a one-year renewal for this school year and title iii provides targeted assistance through our english language development program so we're in the consortium agreement with the mciu and so this is a typical annual renewal request item three is focusing on our dual enrollment agreement with the montgomery county community college this is an annual agreement for our high school students to enroll and participate in college credit courses while in high

130school item four is focusing on the new multimedia equipment that will be used to outfit the new classrooms as part of the stoney creek construction project and this equipment mirrors the template that we have used in class classrooms throughout our district items five six and seven will be seeking approval of outplace tuition contracts which have been explained in a memo to the board i'd be happy to answer any questions any questions all right thank you we're going to move on to the facilities and transportation committee report tracy thank you uh yes the transportation committee had a meeting on september 21st we did go over a few i guess seven items briefly the high school turf project and the middle school area conversion the old pool area we had a discussion on those they were very

131favorable discussions we also talked about the high school and middle school traffic issues which i believe we will be having a vote to [Music] have an engineering study done for for to check out uh if there's something that we can do with the traffic issues there we did talk about the transportation bus drivers trying to find some solutions on the shortage of bus drivers that we have we did discuss the ymca after school care we also talked about the facility rentals and not having i guess it was adult outside entities renting indoor programs right now and then we also talked about uh hepa filters and if there was a need for hepa filters in the individual classrooms uh and then we are going to have three voting items or three action items uh for next

132week and that will be to uh approve or discard excess obsolete equipment which we have on occasion and there's a list here if anybody has any questions and then the approval to purchase adjustable height open front student desks in the amount of ten thousand nine eighty and student chairs the amount of six thousand one ninety fifty cents for the stoney creek and then the authorization that we were just talking about to conduct the traffic study and the amount not to exceed 24 9. there's any questions any questions for tracy okay thank you the finance committee report david thank you joe uh finance committee has no informational items we have we'll have two action items for vote next week first is approval of the financial reports for document 16-1 the second is approval of the list

133of payments uh issued in the month of august for document 16-2 that's all questions for david okay thank you policy committee report marshall thank you uh i have no informational or action items at the end of the report all right thank you a racial equity oversight committee paul thank you joe uh the racial equity and oversight committee met on uh september 20th we had three primary agenda items uh the first was to reconnect the group given the hiatus over the summer we had good attendance and we were able to reconvene um with an agenda for the remainder of the year and that included a review of our uh our equity policy um we felt it was important for the for the committee to have a long-standing uh commitment to the district and the board and

134in doing so we wanted to create a policy around it that would allow it to be everlasting and so we talked about possible language to be included with that and that's an ongoing effort which we will report on again later but a very good discussion around the policy we also discussed upcoming meetings there were a few conflicts that members had so we wanted to find a meeting date that would be amenable to as many members as possible so we had some discussion around that as well as overall what we hope to achieve for the again for the remainder of the year one other thing of importance we did discuss the success that we feel the district and the committee has had to date and there's been a lot of progress since the committee started someone

135was in an ongoing effort starting prior to the committee but we believe the committee did play an influential role in furthering those efforts and just to highlight a couple um that includes the creation uh and fulfillment of the diversity uh position uh that we mentioned earlier in the meeting and we feel that will be an important addition to the district as well as some excellent new hires that add diversity to the entire district at both the administrative level as well as the staff level within the district we have no uh no reporting items are no action items for this meeting okay uh questions or comments for paul all right thank you for moving on to the report of board representatives extracurricular committee tracy nothing at this time mciu board of directors amy thank you so

136we've had two meetings one in august um and then one just last week um we had a couple things one i wanted to bring up related to our transportation and facilities meeting i did ask about the bus situation because we did talk about whether or not the mciu could possibly support us and i did bring it out that we had this issue with bus drivers and i found out that actually they surveyed the districts in the county and 1921 responded and there's 198 bus driver shortages across the county and the nciu alone has i think it was 28 shortages wow so they're in no position to offer any assistance uh they did bring up some things going on at the state level though that the governor is looking into um possibly you know talking to

137penndot about the cdl requirements um also i heard something about um they talked about the national guard being involved uh so it seems like um they're looking into a lot of different options um but there's nothing you know readily available right now to solve the immediate issue um other things we talked about a new mental health support program they have called explorations it's going to be a school-based partial hospitalization program for students in k through 6. so that's a new development they also talked which maybe ron might be talking about some of the legislation um so i won't go into bed but we talked about a couple pieces of legislation to keep an eye on um so if ron doesn't touch on those maybe i'll bring those up thanks thank you uh mciu legislative committee

138ron yes uh we didn't have a meeting but i was uh given some extensive notes uh from the iu about the uh mischief that the state legislature is involved in uh as far as uh the way we uh we in most uh districts responded to the coveted uh pandemic uh one of the things following up the uh uh the constitutional amendment that was rammed through to uh curtail the power of the governor to declare and extend uh emergencies they want to uh pretty well uh squash the the way that public schools will do it they want to expand and provide vouchers and scholarships to private schools that would of course be paid by the public schools whenever public schools are closed because of emergencies and can't provide for in-person classes uh there is no specific

139time as to how long this would be uh the uh the way it is phrased basically as soon as the public schools are closed the parents can start lining up and making us pay for their uh their students to go to private schools and one of the interesting factors in this is once the student is there even when the public schools would reopen the kids would stay again on our dime and of course following the uh the great tradition of the charter schools there's no mention of accountability from the private or charter school as to uh testing or other policies or taking special ed students uh they've also asked u.s department of education because of the uh school bus driver uh shortages that amy mentioned is to uh and this is a quote to lessen

140the burden of obtaining and maintaining a school bus driver endorsement what uh this uh this means it would be easier to get a bus driver's license and uh there's no mention as to how this might put our children in danger with a uh ill-trained uh driver and also uh there's an another uh you've heard of the critical race theory and the uh the reaction to some people that were supposedly teaching it they want to force school districts to post all curriculum and texts online and this seems to be nothing more than a way to make it easier for folks to hunt for the imaginary uh critical race theory classes that we don't actually have but it would then make it easier for them to uh to conjure things up and that and basically the state

141legislature is just getting started thank you okay thank you um north monco technical career center ronnie okay on september 20th i attended what i hope was my last zoom meeting with north monco and what we talked about there they're proposing two new programs at north montco one is a sports medicine program which will deal with rehabilitation aid it's a three to four year program that would be done with montgomery community college and it would be for about 40 to 45 students the other new program is a social media and digital marketing program obviously that has to do with video and photography and the other is an i.t program those would be one-year programs for about 40 to 50 students and that's my report thank you uh psba liaison zephy nothing to report but very cool

142stuff at north monco yeah for sure okay so that takes us to the second public comment period of the evening where we will hear public comment on any school related topic and again we'll alternate between in-person comments and then check the zoom queue the same rules apply as to our first public comment period and we have one registered speaker in person this evening and that is deanne morris from ambler speaking about testing and vaccines all right hi i'm diane from ambler and i just first wanted to say thank you guys so much for all that you've done this year my kids are in school and they're so happy and they love mrs kanabka and they love their teacher who's also brand new we saw on the video ms dugan so thank you guys so much

143i really appreciate it um there's just a couple safety things i wanted to bring up just because of my own want to do it sorry um the kova dashboard i know dr chris field you touched on this earlier the one thing that i really wanted to have information on is what grade was affected by the covet outbreak is that a i don't think that would violate any um privacy issues just because my kids eat lunch with their grade they play at recess with their grade and so i just would have feel better and i think parents would too if we knew what grade level the case took place at the second thing i wanted to encourage was testing in school of students i know i would happily sign a thing to let my students get

144my kids get tested anytime because parents are struggling whether or not to send their kids to school when they have a cold or allergies and there's not tests readily available anymore they're expensive and they're hard to find the rapid antigen tests are actually quite useful and accurate and telling us viral load and so if a kid tests negative and they go to school they're probably not they don't have enough of the virus to be contagious and so that's really useful information for parents when making decisions they don't want to make the wrong decision and put other people at risk but they also want their child in school so if the district could help with that in any way i think we'd all be super appreciative the other thing i wanted to encourage was soon the

145fda approval for the emergency youth authorization for five to 11 year olds for the vaccine should be coming and i would love to see the district preemptively set up a clinic where we could get our students back needed as soon as possible and the last thing i wanted to just mention and this is not code related my kids and i walk to school every day am i doing this my kids and i walk to school every day and we love that and we're so thankful but there there's a street at mount pleasant and hendrickson night that is really dangerous and um cars don't stop properly okay so that intersection is just so dangerous and i would love if a crossing card could be there um not only for elementary but middle school kids too i

146think sometimes middle school and high school kids who think they are making good decisions and they can but sometimes they're distracted by their phones and drivers are distracted and i just think it would help so much thank you so much for your time thank you okay let's uh check the queue on zoom katie can you see if there are any uh hands raised we have one raised for amanda okay uh please uh introduce your name introduce yourself in your name municipality residence and topic please hi my name is amanda hunt and i'm a voice resident of whitpain township and my topic is just following up on uh the board meeting from the last board meeting speech and language services as well as reading intervention services and also the use of microphones and for the teachers

147in schools good evening i would like to follow up from the last board meeting regarding the district's mitigation efforts in providing speech language services as well as pull-out reading intervention due to the current masking requirements i would like to thank miss walsh for her suggestion at the conclusion of the last meeting regarding the possibility of both the students and interventionists utilizing face shields with distancing measures in place during such services as i stated at the previous board meeting local professionals agree that the ability for students and interventionists to see each other's mouths is crucial during these services other mitigation efforts could include providing these services outdoors without masks i would greatly appreciate feedback from the board regarding this i have also been in contact with several teachers at stony creek elementary school who have purchased

148their own vocal amplifiers to use during instructional time since they seem to find them so helpful the home and school association teacher representative sent a poll to all teachers at stoney creek regarding the desire for such devices according to the poll over 20 staff members at stony creek agreed that a voice amplifier would be beneficial to them the cost of these amplifiers that the teachers have purchased on their own is between 30 and 40 dollars i believe it would be extremely beneficial if the district could provide these devices to any staff member that needs one in order to enhance communication between themselves and their students according to a local speech and language pathologist there is concern that teachers may permanently damage their vocal cords over time due to the straining that occurs during instruction with

149masks i am also concerned that children are not able to decipher all instruction clearly during the day due to the muffling effect that masks create i know these are complex times with complex issues but working together we can find creative solutions to maximize the educational experience of our students teachers and staff members thank you for your time and consideration of these very important issues thank you okay uh katie are there any other raised hands no no other raised hands on zoom all right um thank you so that uh takes us to board comment any uh comments from my fellow board members hey joe it's stuffy i failed to kind of give a huge shout out to kristen rowling's um the wsd annual report for was just finalize and i believe it's going to be hitting

150everybody's mailbox soon i know last year was a really tough year on a number of themes or points but i feel kristin did a really nice job of finding all the silver linings that we did have last year and i want to thank her for all the work that went into it i still think uh wissa hicken had a lot of great things to be proud of and i'm glad we were able to get um some of those things accomplished last year so i meant to bring that up at communications but sorry kristin um yes thanks for that comment uh zephy and uh if you were here in person the board members in the room we got actually got a copy of the wizarding silver linings and i believe it'll be in people's mailboxes pretty

151soon and yes it does look fantastic and there's a lot of good news to report um tracy upstart you uh had a comment as well uh yeah well on the side track i i just received this in my mail today as well so people should be getting them today hopefully um i think that's a very good idea that the caller had about the vocal amplifiers i think that's something that we should look into especially if they are something that is 30 or 40 dollars per teacher i think that it's just like something really simple that can help tremendously and i just wanted to say that i thought it was great and exciting that one of our new teachers graduated from wissa hicken you know the new uh high school french teacher i thought that was

152i think that's just great when we have our own students that go off to their lives and do their little college stint and then they come back home to wisa hicken and want to be a part of the program again at wizahic and i just think that says a lot about their time here when they're a student that they want to come back here and help and teach here i think that's just a great testament to our school district and that's it great thank you amy first then ron thank you i just wanted to thank wade and jerry and mrs vanessa for allowing our students at stoney creek last week to plant some shrubbery around the school we all had the tour last week and we saw the beautiful edition and how it's coming along

153but then later in the week some of our students planted some shrubbery around the school and it looks really beautiful so next time you're over there please check it out and i really appreciate our administration working to allow our students to be able to participate in that thank you ron yeah uh i realized we're not supposed to make comments about the uh uh the statements that uh are made during the uh the comments section but ron just interrupt um right we typically don't want to engage in a back-and-forth dialogue with speakers but you are free to comment right on the comments you've heard but uh i i would like to second uh or third in this case uh the the idea of a voice amplifier i know as a uh a teacher in september uh

154the beginning of the year it's often a strain on teachers uh voices because they're they've not been trying to speak constantly at the volume needed and you add a mask it becomes even more difficult some teachers uh you can hear them two or three rooms away some you can barely hear them with uh with their mask and uh and without the putting a lot of strain in it uh i have uh a a rather sophisticated hearing aid and one of the adjustments uh one of the settings is literally mask that uh that came in very handy for these uh last 18 months and uh for the ability for uh to help our teachers and uh and obviously by helping our teachers helping our students learn so that the kids don't have to uh to strain

155as much and as to worry about did i hear exactly what uh the teacher was saying i think it's an investment we can make and uh and not every teacher needs one and i think we should uh make this uh as a uh a project for those who uh who need it and certainly to uh to reimburse those who have made the investment because they uh they realized it was necessary for them to do a better job in the classroom and uh uh i would not hesitate to uh to to propose a uh a motion to uh for that kind of expenditure all right thank you other board members alex are you still around any uh comments before we close out i don't have any at this time okay um well then can i ask

156for a motion to adjourn the meeting second all those in favor say hi hi hi hi meeting adjourned thank you everyone have a good night